Tuesday, April 26, 2016

"And, I don't want anything formal."
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Gets me every time. In the early years I would explain how 'formal' is your friend. Now, I just let it rip, playing with formal elements, don't mention the word, and enjoy, "I love this."
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Because I know what is most important in life, I checked Pinterest late last nite, hoping something new popped up for Furlow Gatewood. This pic, below, may not be new but I had never seen his allee of mophead hydrangea from this angle.
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Gatewood's allee has sailed a fleet of ships since its debut in Veranda in July of 2013.
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Adore how he smashed formal into wild wood.
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His wild wood of canopy-understory-walls-floors, a total home run.
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Another home run? No dinky-is-stinky here.
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Further south than my garden, I look at Gatewood's hydrangea, nostrils flared, right eyebrow cocked/loaded, in a momentary whiff of envy. No near decade of leisurely late freezes, in March/April, taking out hydrangea buds.
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No, there is not next year to get this decadence, below, back. It is several good 'next years' in a row, to get the decadence back.
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Before you think this is a problem to maintain, notice front/left, a clearly exposed drip irrigation tube.
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Friday, October 16, 2015

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not
born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is
born.” Anais Nin.
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Hydrangea, friend. We met in college, she changed every thing. Not that I knew. Her beauty, for sure, then realizing her ease. Finally, understanding the unspoken. This koan, a moment of intuitive enlightenment, in Earth time, for me, 2+ decades.
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The serpent enters. Late frosts pale in comparison.
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Pruning hydrangeas had been talk of old wood, new wood, remontant, timing. Now, enters, hydrangea cane borer.
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I've lost several hydrangeas due to, Hydrangea Cane Borer.

Hydrangea cane borers enter freshly pruned canes, tunnel down, and by the time you 'see' trouble, your plant is dead, or mostly there.

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

From the 1st visit with the realtor to our new home, I KNEW the garden around the house would be gravel with meandering paths & terraces of gravel further from the house. And, siting of large pots with HYDRANGEA, drip irrigation of course, were paramount.

Leaving a cottage garden of 3 decades, our new garden is American Farmhouse, ca. 1900. More importantly, its design will be for our 80 year old selves. I must be 80 years old, have a gorgeous garden with zero worries about maintaining it. A garden must leverage life, not the reverse.
.This garden, above/below, I shot late last summer. Limelight hydrangeas in the same situation as my new garden. Loving, to the center of my DNA, this garden, I had zero clue I would soon be owning similar. Alas, it's owned by a man, greatly talented, and strong. My garden must be smarter, my strength not as great. Game on.

Fearless, gravel will go to the house, similarly, below.

Not wanting formality, gravel will lap at our century old pecan trees, Tara Turf will lap at some pecan trees too.

As time passes, stone will be added to the gravel as needed. Stone, below, added for rain issues. And, I will site wisteria 'Amethyst Falls' at my front porch. Vines or espaliered trees/shrubs add lush without space.

Knowing gravel terraces will be included, below, great anticipation in wondering 'exactly' where.

Transitioning to meadow, I will add checkerboard squares, below.

Furlow Gatewood has smashed a bottle of champagne upon thousands of ships, below, with his allee of hydrangeas in pots. Copy, it's the 1st rule of garden design.

Wildly, without knowing the deeper truths of our new garden, my initial thoughts for design are more than suitable at age 80. Even life saving, for any age. Snakes, the indigenous timber rattler. Luckily have already interrupted a long king snake under the house. Lucky, yet totally scared when I saw him.
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Gravel is the best solution, trying to be safe, in defense of snakes near the house. I got the memo, go me.
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Sourcing pots now, I think I've found them !
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Garden & Be Well, XO T
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Top 2 pics mine, the rest from my Pinterest Board, Stone.

Does your garden tell me who you are? This one does, as all good gardens must.

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Under the Tuscan Sun, Frances Mayes, her sister asked, "Have you seen her house." Frances knew, she's asking, "Who is she, what is she like?"

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Hydrangeas do great in pots. Choose mopheads, PeeGee, Tardiva, Limelight, etc.
.Worried about hydrangea's brown sticks in winter? Move on from that chapter, it's too shallow for you. Good Garden Design backdrops normal changes thru the seasons in beauty.
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Focal points change by the day.

Tara Turf, above/below. Garden Design is fierce in this garden.
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Fierce? Simplicity is hard, keeping elements of the poverty cycle is hard, good Garden Design is hard.
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Getting to this iteration of his garden, I know the gardener grew through, and blew through, many life chapters. Many.
.Self -will ended. Gardenese is spoken here. A life language. More, the language of Providence.

Tomato still in its peat pot with cellophane wrap & tags. Awaiting a much larger pot & bamboo cane trellis. Perhaps this weekend? Hydrangea blossoms hanging lower, petal margins crispier, will I cut to dry or leave to enjoy from the windows?

Calm. Boring is good. Idle chit-chat in the head.

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Something new to learn about Social Media. Facebook cannot control pictures during war. Images seen cannot be unseen, merely absorbed into a safe, prayerful, place.

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Again, my Garden working for me.

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Have you watched the award winning foreign film, Burnt by the Sun ? "The film depicts the story of a senior Red Army officer and his family during the Great Purge of the late 1930s in the StalinistSoviet Union. Like a tragedy bySophocles, Burnt by the Sun takes place over the course of one day." Wikipedia

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Oddly, it's beautiful.

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Glad it taught my heart to assimilate what I saw yesterday within mundane ubiquity of beauty in a tomato & hydrangea. The gift of choices, health to act upon them, perhaps a dinner party in late summer honoring the last of the tomatoes. With dried hydrangeas in a vase.

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This is freedom.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken in my garden this morning.

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client,local/on-line.

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Continue with your life accepting garden views harmful to your spirit or make the choice to create garden views joyful to your heart.

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Too busy? No Money? Life issues?

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Then, those views are essential.

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I know from whence I speak. With zero need to relay any of it here.

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No matter where you start, your garden can take you (if needed) from victim to survivor to thriver.

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Each of us is all of the above, excepting, too often, thriver.

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When you make a choice for your garden, you indeed make a choice to thrive.

Standing at the kitchen sink this morning eating yogurt I see, above, to my left, Torte de Shelle, resting on the table Beloved commissioned for me as a birthday gift.

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The mophead hydrangeas starting to color, above, a gift from my bosom friend Penny McHenry, who died several years ago.

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Without moving my feet, and looking right, above, another hydrangea from Penny causing a great stir in my heart as it approaches peak.
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The teak bench was a 40th birthday present to myself. It arrived with a surprise, it needed assembly. I adore that type of chore !
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The variegated Boxwood was bought on a whim, not knowing if it would do well in this zone. It does well.
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Is it any wonder I stand at the kitchen sink & eat breakfast? Literally, the energy & joy filling into my spirit is felt. Pure atonement.
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2+ decades ago I named my business, A Garden View, Inc. Obvious, now, where I was headed though zero clue at the time.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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pics taken this morning. Pic, below, though fuzzy is my favorite.

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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client,local/on-line.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

This week in my garden, below. Small, less than 8500sf, it never bores.

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Potted hydrangea setting bud, below, blooms all summer. Behind the hydrangea camellia sasanqua blooms all fall. Left of the hydrangea a camellia japonica blooms all winter. Hellebores in stone terrace, bloomed all winter, pruned down for summer.

Not a day in the year does my garden lack blooms, structure or beauty.

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WITHOUT EFFORT.

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However, those are not salient facts.

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Maximum pollinator habitat is the most important detail. Which includes subsidiary effects.
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No fertilizer to kill mycorrhizal fungi, earthworms or poison groundwater. No need to even mention insecticides. And, a potager producing 80% more produce with the increased pollinators. In addition, no lawn to mow-water-feed. Picking up on the time-effort-money this type of garden saves?
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Shade during summer cuts electric bills by 40% with leaves dropping allowing the sun to help heat my house. Aside from mental health this little garden has given me a career. Very nice, but more greatly, purpose backed with passion.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Conservatory is rescued doors/windows with siding from a century old fishing cabin torn down at Lake Burton. Chandelier, wood stove, antiques, gravel floor, lamps-more-lamps, and my wireless reaches to the Conservatory. Go me ! For a decade my garage held the gathering storm of this Conservatory.
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For a beautiful garden & home filling you with joy, become my client,local/on-line.

Monday, August 26, 2013

really plant enough to give blooms away.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pic taken at jobsite this week. H. 'Tardiva' begin blooming in August and will grow into a small tree in full sun where they thrive.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Yes, this client is waltzing with her garden now. Leading too.
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She surprised me with this little cart. And was correct, never seen one before. Years of fun ahead with this cutie.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics taken this month in client garden. We've worked almost 3 years to get to this point. Pure play. Of course plantings still arriving in layers too.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Viewed from deck & house the existing lower garden, above, leads to their wild wood.
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They hired me to design their landscape. Of course I left this alone! Tweaks could be made but out goes THEIR charm.
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And, they built this DIY !
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Alexander Pope......Men come to build sooner than to garden finely as if gardening were the greater art. ca. 17th century
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pic via client's Facebook page

Monday, August 20, 2012

The 2nd said, "It is more important to be kind than to be right.".
She was in her 70's when they were taped to her mirror.
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Active, Penny was forever getting into 'pickles'. At least once a year she forgot these quotes, thoroughly.
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Her charm lay in immediate repentance & contrition. I drove Penny a lot of places thru the years & it was always a thrill when she would begin, "Perhaps I shouldn't have told....."
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics via my bad. Apologies for not saving the sources.

Aaron Copland anticipated my arrival, writing Appalachian Spring for my garden & for me. I hear it in my garden & looking at the pics.
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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
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Pics from my garden during days of great drought, heat, humidity & zero maintenance or watering. This is why I've taken you around my garden the past few days. You must know how easy it is to have a garden.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

"Cecil was actually the first person ever to walk me round a garden, which he regularly did at his house in Reddish.This seemingly simple act, like so many in one's life, was seminal in opening up to me the very idea that one could actually make a garden at all." Sir Roy Strong, about his friend Sir Cecil Beaton.Do you walk friends round your garden?Do you have friends that walk you round their garden?

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I do.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken in my garden last week. FYI, zero watering for these plants. Beauty Without Effort; great mantra to me. Just another little detail why "sustainable" is such a COS. (Does this show Puppet Barbuda's age?) Sustainable? Why accept sooooooo little? FTS.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Hydrangeas, too many weeks, have spilled into my paths. (These are EXACTLY the type of problems I want in life!) Finally, edges of their blossoms feel 'papery'. Time to dry. Drought & hi temps are the obvious diary entries upon each petal.

Cut the stems, peel off the foliage. Voila, ready to dry.

Lazy Woman's Guide to Drying Hydrangeas by Tara Dillard.

Could it get any easier, above/below, than sliding an entire bouquet in the slats of my French garden chair?

I like that the blossoms are not perfect.

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Their story, more potent.

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Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

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Pics taken Sunday. Love, love how my Robin's egg blue looks in the top pic. The table, from France, on the patio many years, was moved inside while redecorating earlier this year.